Hi.
Transcripts for episodes 11-16 are in pdf at wp.me/aVOkQ-1el
I'm not sure if I'm going to keep doing the pdf transcripts. They aren't getting much love, probably because the same material comes out on social media platforms, the blog, and the podcast.
As always, suggestions for episode themes welcome. This week was Sir Cleges and the Cherries, next week is magpie rhymes. The week after is probably Cleopatra's biography by Susan Schiff.
Glad to see you're still doing these! I saw your first couple, some years ago. I think one was about the books on your shelf (as in, literal books in view of the camera) and one on the methodology of Covenant Hooks. I need to start reading through the backlog.
If you're taking suggestions, would you be up for discussing rules of thumb to classify or translate fantastical creatures into one of the four realms?
For example, take the wendigo of classic mythology (A North American legend as such, but cannibalistic forest dwellers are relatively common amongst all mythologies).
It could easily be considered a faerie creature--it is a former human, turned into a cannibal by punishment, and now needs the flesh of humans to survive and sate its hunger.
A case could be made for it to be a magical creature--it needs only human flesh, after all, and doesn't need to have conversations with humans. It just wants to eat, not to learn, grow, or change.
An infernal case is a possibility if it emphasizes the stalking and hunting--perhaps it seeks to drive its prey mad while it hunts them, hopefully causing them to turn on and betray each other?
For another example, a spirit of madness that infiltrates mortals' dreams and seeks to drive them insane. It needs humanity too much to be magic, but it could be either faerie or infernal in nature.
I do enjoy the transcriptions a lot 
I certainly enjoy the podcast, but admittedly don't view the transcripts. I've noticed a strong trend towards Faerie stories, but I realized that makes sense, considering how faeries come about. Your podcast has helped me understand the realms of power much better.
Oh, those were video...I decided they were not worth the addition effort over podcasting, so I just podcast now. It's called Games From Folktales. 
+1 for the transcripts.
I can read them while listening to music, or on my phone, whereas the podcast requires silence and more concentration.
I like these a lot, though.
As per rewards, I'd suggest allowing people to ask you a question/give you a theme, but you're already fishing for these.
Something that interests me: In a lot of discussions about "future ars", people tend to assume that our world, with your physics and landmass, is, unless disturbed, what Mythic Europe would look like. So you end up with ideas based on books like Dresden Files or Rivers of London. But in my opinion, this is wrong, in no small part because ME physics are different, so, even with America and all existing, a lot of modern inventions just aren't possible, unless you go for a WW-like change in reality.
So any "Future Ars" would be an uchronia.
Would you happen to have some ideas among these lines?
Hum...
Another question/idea: The progenitors of Magic. Sure, there's the 2 angels in RoP: tI, but there must be other tales, in both Europe and the Levant. Where did magic came from? How did the first humans manage to harness it? Is there some common theme/implication to these?
I LOVED your aquam article. If you have similar ideas on other arts, I'm all for it.
Anyway, thank you very, very much for these. From where I'm standing, along with Sub Rosa, you are keeping the torch lit in a time of darkness.
Hi all!
Just a note to say that the pdf transcript of the four October episodes is now up.
timothyferguson.wordpress.com/2 ... ober-2016/
It doesn't include the surprise, out of sequence, episode I released whimsically for Halloween, about the legality of punching clowns in Mythic Europe. That will be in the next one. This one is
Prosthetic parasites
Pre-Romantic models of love
First Fruits
Why do magpies keep following me?
I'm trying to get myself a buffer of one month of episodes, and I managed it, then gave it away by putting the clown episode out early (and not leaving a gap for it: there will still be an episode this Australian Friday).
The other episodes for November are
Environmental determinism and the Order of Hermes (about what the population of the Order says about vis availability)
Ptolemaic survival (about the descendants of Cleopatra)
Curdling magic (about where cursed magic items come from)
Second thoughts (this is episode 26, so I'm going to go back over the first 25 and give any ideas which have occurred to me that I should have included. Even the clown-puncher idea: I discovered a new type of faerie the day before it went live, and couldn't splice it in).
I'm hoping to do an episode filled with fake radio ads, much like Prairie Home Companion (well, under Keilor: I've not yet caught up with the new host). I had originally planned that as ep 026, but I might just do it as an out-of-sequence. It would work as an April Fool episode, I suppose.
Ten years ago I briefly ran a blog leading up to launch of City and Gild. I'm going to trickle those articles into this, perhaps one per month, starting December.
This week's episode, on Friday, is really short. Sorry about that.
As it happens, next week's is huge. I didn't deliberately set out to do a half hour show, but I'm not even finished it yet and it's a half hour of edited material.
I said in a previous post it was a "second look" episode. Not so! Instead I unpack a Romantic ballad and look for site Boons and Hooks.
The notes are going to be less of a transcript this time, because, well, they would be too huge.
So, those of you asking for a longer show....as a one-time thing, Episode 25 (Friday 25 November my time) is it.
Home sick today, so I did an edit on the podcast episode for 7 December, and noticed my podcast plan gave me 5 more minutes of audio provided I used them before December 1. So, there's a short bonus ep. today: you will still get the half-hour episode on Friday. The following Friday will also be really long (16 minutes). It's a slight reworking of a post I made about dowries a very long time ago.
Hi,
I'm working up a version of each of these. I think that they are likely to be 16 and 23 December, unless I can think of something seasonal, or an article practically writes itself. So, thanks for the suggestions.
I've been working on an article for a month or so now, and its themeing was all worked out so that the December pdf copies its grey colours....but I can't get it to come together. So...I have this one half-written thing that might snap into focus and push them later.
So, thanks again.
Hi,
I've scripted the epsiodes for until the end of December, but need to start work on the January ones.
As might have been obvious, I've been having trouble with fresh scripting for a weekly episode, so I've been reworking some of my older material. Really long episodes, like this weeks, and next week's, also take a heap of time, which gets in the way of researching new material.
For the next year, what I'm thinking of doing is going through a book and extending it, by commenting on it and giving new ways of using the material. I'm not sure if I should start with Sanctuary of Ice or Covenants. SoI needs the most updating, because it was researched before Google existed. Covenants, though, gets more use, and might be of interest to a wider group of listeners.
Opinions are really welcome.
Hi,
I've scripted the epsiodes for until the end of December, but need to start work on the January ones.
As might have been obvious, I've been having trouble with fresh scripting for a weekly episode, so I've been reworking some of my older material. Really long episodes, like this weeks, and next week's, also take a heap of time, which gets in the way of researching new material.
For the next year, what I'm thinking of doing is going through a book and extending it, by commenting on it and giving new ways of using the material. I'm not sure if I should start with Sanctuary of Ice or Covenants. SoI needs the most updating, because it was researched before Google existed. Covenants, though, gets more use, and might be of interest to a wider group of listeners.
Opinions are really welcome.
Oh, wonderful!! I look forward to reading these Thanks to you for all these articles, I've been enjoying them a lot.
IMO, this is a great idea.
Older tribunal books are sometimes ill-suited to 5th Ed, especially given the chances done to some houses (Tremere, I'm looking at you), so I think any help or advice you can give on this is sure to be appreciated
While ideas come and go, and I often find myself flush with 'ideas', I find lots of my ideas feel a bit brief or shallow for a podcast episode. So while I may not have lots of good ideas, I can tell you what I've most enjoyed in this fantastic podcast: The Aquam episode certainly stands out to me the most notable. It felt the most directly traslateable to play. The Werebear and Sampo episodes helped me spawn ideas and plot threads as a storyguide, while the clothes-episode and the First Fruit episodes helped me smooth out a bit of my feudal-Europe feel.
I would say the episodes I enjoyed the most are those which helped me understand or clarify parts of Ars Magica which I was unclear and unsure on. Right now, the Divine and Infernal realms are things I'm having trouble smoothing into my play. The Divine is tricky for me to use without feeling Deus Ex Machina, and the Infernal realms have a tendency to feel... well... Mad Cackling Evil (tm).
Brief and shallow is fine: the most popular podcast this month (in terms of downloads) was Robinsonades, which is about four minutes long. 8)
Really long podcasts take a lot longer to make than a bunch of short ones. I know that sounds odd, but it really is true. The Christmas episode, which is about three minutes, is a "clean take", so it took three minutes.
Shallot, by way of counterexample, was a punch-and-roll take, which means I flagged errors and kept recording when I made mistakes. Three minutes of it take six minute to produce, not including scripting (which is also shorter for single ideas).
The one I just uploaded was made when I was having sneezing fits, and so it was about twelve minutes for the three, plus scripting.
Thanks for the kind feedback.
Runsheet for the upcoming episodes:
Recorded and uploaded to Libsyn:
Why is there no Art of Tempus?
Who brings Christmas presents to the Order?
Daqin: China views the West
The Origins of Magic
Recorded, waiting for my monthly plan to roll over:
Sanctuary of Ice: the boring bit at the front
Scripted, not yet recorded:
Whaling in Medieval Europe
Partially scripted, but basically a behemoth that no sensible person would write, and I may keep as a special episode like the 100th.
What I did with the Lady of Shallot, but using "The Goblin Market" on Christina Rosetti. It's huge...and Americans have fake blackberries! And my mum was feeding me poison! It's all drama...
Research has started, but no scripts:
Rolling time forward (Hi, Fixer! I don't think I nailed your idea in the episode that comes out this week. I'll give it another shot. I had an idea for modern day people in ArM5 that got cut out of grogs, but I'd also like to do something on why the Order's existence wrecks the Triangular Atlantic Trade nd what that means.)
Interpreting "The Listeners" by Walter de la Mare.
Gang, if you know a good public domain poem I can pick apart Lady of Shallot style...please share. All other ideas also welcome, but I think I'd like to move to a "one poem a month" sort of structure. So far I have some ideas about Goblin Market, The Listeners,and She Walks in Beauty,
does dance of joy
Great! The more, the merrier! 
This Atlantic trade idea looks interesting too, I am eager to read it.
Thanks again for these little bits of Ars Magica
Poems: Tintern Abbey; Ben Jonson's "To Penshurst"; Kublai Khan; Ryme of the Ancient Mariner
I think your concern about doing too much SoI is probably well founded. Perhaps think of SoI as your place to go to when you have no other topic handy. If you're getting listeners who aren't necessarily playing Ars, but are interested in mythical (as opposed to Mythic) Europe, they will still find something interesting about the Alps, but may not want 12 episodes on it.
Fair enough in point. My little idealets would include the following (that I can currently remember): Historical and myth-historical events that can be adapted to an ArM campaign seed, including tales about how Kings and nobles were annointed or slain; Using the wrong magic for the right job (PeIg as a preservative); a story where nobody wants to play the Wizard; Noble Hunting parties as an institution in Mythic Europe; Migrations of faeries to new locales.
The transcripts for 2016 are now all in one place (including the December transcripts, which are new).
timothyferguson.wordpress.com/2 ... anscripts/
A note on progress:
The next six episodes are recorded and uploaded to Libsyn. They are:
031 - The Early History of Magic
032 - Sanctuary of Ice : The Boring Bit At The Start
033 - Whaling in Mythic Europe
034 - Falling backward through time
035 - Moral luck
036 - Self made men are monsters
...and should automatically go live each Friday (Australian EST)
In scripting I only have one.
037 - Sanctuary of Ice : Labyrinth of Lanes.
I have another two, about Hermetic funeral customs and contagious acedia, that I couldn't really get plot hooks together out of it, and so they will sit on the back burner until a new angle strikes. I was listening to various things (Joseph Campbell, W.B. Yeats) and not getting new hooks.
I did have one idea I was working no about the early history of the Order, but think it may work better as Sub Rosa : Secrets and Lies. Also, I'd like to get something together for the Peripheral Code guys, so an adventure idea I had may go there, if I can get it into shape. Its from Yeats, and is about a faerie curse.
This is my way of saying I'm always happy to take ideas from members of the community, but that you might need to wait a while before you hear the podcast about that idea. 8)
There's also one that's recorded but not uploaded, because at 48 minutes, it will take an entire month's quota on my plan.
050 - Goblin market (It also has a completed, stand alone, issue of shownotes in pdf. At 20 pages it's too long to share space with another article, if I'm using Canva as my layout tool. It's like the Lady of Shallot one I did before.)